As the lone figure of a woman paces the
New York docks one foggy night, Hard Swede, a sailor, tells the
night watchman about her. Swede, the former captain of the
gambling ship Fortuna , explains that the woman is waiting
for the return of the ship and its owner, gambler Joe "the Greek"
Adams, but adds that the ship will never return because it is
sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Swede then
relates the following story: Just prior to America's entry into
World War II, the Fortuna is about to sail for Havana when
Joe and his partner, Zepp, receive their draft notices.
Protesting that he fought his war by
crawling out of the gutter, Joe decides to circumvent the draft by
assuming the identity of petty criminal Joe Bascopolous, a dying
sailor who has been classified 4-F. Joe and Zepp, who has also
been classified 1-A, roll the dice for the ownership of the boat and
Bascopolous' 4-F card, and after Joe wins the roll, Zepp goes to the
draft board and is himself classified as physically unfit to serve
because of a heart condition. Joe is searching for a way to
raise money to sail when socialite Dorothy Bryant approaches him on
the street and asks him to buy a ticket to the War Relief charity
ball.
Realizing that the ball offers a perfect
way for him to raise the money, Joe visits the all female War Relief
office and suggests that a gambling concession at the ball could
easily raise $100,000 to send medical supplies to Europe.
Captain Steadman, the head of the organization, is charmed by Joe
and his idea, but Dorothy protests that gambling is illegal.
After leaving the draft board, Zepp,
meanwhile, returns to the ship and finds a letter from the parole
board addressed to Bascopolous, notifying him that he is in
violation of his parole and will be automatically imprisoned for
life if he commits one more criminal offense. Zepp pockets the
letter and, after lying that he has several weeks to report for
duty, asks to stay onboard the boat. Joe, undaunted by
Dorothy's opposition, returns to the War Relief office to enlist as
a recruit and Dorothy puts him to work knitting.
The next day, Joe wins Dorothy's
admiration when he uses a trick coin to get McDougal, a purveyor of
used blankets, into donating his merchandise to the war effort.
When Dorothy asks Joe why he is so interested in aiding her
organization, he sees some newspaper headlines announcing the Nazi
invasion of the Varda Valley and tells her that his family lives
there and he just wants to do his part. Feeling guilty,
Dorothy invites Joe to accompany her to the docks, where Comstock, a
supplier, has refused to unload a shipment of supplies without
payment.
At the docks, Joe follows Comstock into
his office and strongarms him into releasing the supplies. In
the struggle, Comstock tears Joe's jacket and Dorothy insists on
bringing him home to repair it. On the drive home, Joe teaches
Dorothy a form of rhyming slang in which the words "my darling"
would be transposed as "briny marlin." Joe thinks that Dorothy
invited him home for romantic reasons, and when she denies this, he
offers to settle their differences by playing the same coin game he
used on McDougal. When Dorothy incorrectly assumes that he
plans to trick her, Joe, insulted, coldly informs her that his motto
is "never give a sucker an even break, but don't cheat a friend."
Joe's words shame Dorothy into offering him the gambling concession,
and a triumphant Joe returns to the ship and informs his gang that
they will soon sail to Havana with the ball proceeds. Joe
requires $6,000 to start the games rolling, and consequently, when
Dorothy writes a personal check in the same amount as a deposit on a
freighter, Joe offers to deliver the check to Hargraves, the
shipping commissioner.
At the Commissioner's office, Joe
watches as Hargraves endorses the check and then convinces him that
it is unpatriotic to demand a down payment. Chagrined,
Hargraves returns the check and Joe pretends to tear it up.
When Joe cashes the check, Dorothy's grandfather, Mr. Bryant,
notifies the police, who then visit the War Relief office to arrest
Joe Bascopolous for parole violations. After the police appear
at the office, Dorothy pretends that Joe is the water man and
arranges to meet him later that afternoon.
Picking him up in her car, Dorothy, who
hates Joe's loud ties, presents him with a new tie and drives him to
her country house in Maryland. When they arrive, she tells him
about the police and calls her grandfather and threatens to marry
Joe unless he calls off the police. Resenting Dorothy's
threat, Joe accuses her of feeling superior to him, but she denies
this and kisses him. They then drive back to New York, and
after dropping Dorothy at her house, Joe speeds away, confused.
Later, Joe appears at Dorothy's door, and after asking her to reknot
his tie, he kisses her.
That evening, before the ball, Joe asks
Swede about Bascopolous, and Swede shows him a letter, written in
Greek, addressed to the dead sailor. Taking the letter to a
Greek priest for translation, Joe learns that the letter is from
Bascopolous' mother, notifying him that his two brothers have died
while defending their village from the Nazis. After the priest
comforts him with a prayer, Joe goes to the ball, puts $6,000 in an
envelope addressed to Hargraves, and then declares that all the
proceeds will go to War Relief, Inc. Zepp overhears Joe's
announcement and tells the gang that he is planning to double-cross
them.
Later that evening, when Mr.
Bryant arrives with the police to confront Joe about Hargraves'
check and to demand a stop to the gambling, Joe hands him the
envelope addressed to Hargraves and orders the proceeds totalled.
In the cashier's cage, Joe is confronted by Zepp and the others, who
threaten to expose him as a draft dodger unless he remains silent
about the false bottoms in the cash boxes. After the War
Relief workers leave the office with a paltry $812 retrieved from
the boxes, Zepp unloads the bottoms, rolling the money in a
newspaper. Aware that she has been cheated, Dorothy returns to
the cage and demands the money. Joe, knowing that Zepp has a
gun in his pocket pointed at her, slaps Dorothy unconscious and then
slugs Zepp, who shoots Joe. Before the crowd can return, the
wounded Joe kicks Zepp in the head, gathers the money and escapes.
The next day, at the Bryant house, a
distraught Dorothy is about to make a statement to the press when
Swede arrives to deliver the bundle of money. Although Swede
refuses to tell Dorothy where Joe is hiding, she tracks him down
when she hears that the Fortuna has been turned into a
medical ship and renamed the Briny Marlin . Racing to
the docks, Dorothy arrives just in time to see Joe sail away.
Although she begs him to let her join him, he refuses. Swede
concludes his story by telling the watchman that after delivering
the medical supplies, the ship was sunk and he and Joe enlisted in
the Merchant Marine and are now home on leave. When Joe joins
Swede at the docks, the watchman orders them to move their dinghy,
which is tied up to the pier on which Dorothy is standing. The
watchman suggests that they flip a coin to decide who will move it,
and employing a two-headed coin, he tricks Joe into losing. As
Joe begins to walk toward the boat, Dorothy sees him and the two
embrace.
Notes
The working titles of this film were Bundles for Freedom and
From Here to Victory. According to a March 1942 news
item in HR, RKO bought Milton Holmes's story "Bundles for
Freedom" at the request of
Cary Grant, who wanted to star in it. The studio purchased
the story for $30,000 prior to its publication in Cosmopolitan.
Materials contained in the RKO Archives Script Files at the UCLA
Arts Library-Special Collections reveal that the character of "Joe"
dies at the end of Holmes's original story. In a 1969 HR
news item, Holmes claimed that his story was inspired by Edward
G. Nealis, the owner of the Clover Club on the Sunset Strip.
In 1936, Neales rigged a one-night gambling benefit at the Beverly
Hills Hotel to raise $40,000 for a church. According to other
materials contained in the Script Files, in June and July 1942,
Charles Bracket worked with Holmes on a treatment and adaptation of
his story. Although not credited onscreen, Dudley Nichols
wrote a final script for From Here to Victory, dated October
23, 1942, just five days prior to the start of the film's
production. The CBCS also credits Nichols with screenplay.
According to materials contained in the RKO Archives Production
Files, Kenneth Earl, M.M. Musselman and Edmund Joseph also worked on
continuities for the film. The exact nature of the
contribution of these writers to the completed film has not been
confirmed, however.
According to other materials contained
in the production files, Ruth Warrick tested for the part of
"Dorothy." A news item in HR adds that Anna Lee was
also considered for a leading role. This picture marked Alan
Carney's screen debut.
Laraine Day was borrowed from MGM to co-star with Grant and
photographer George Barnes was borrowed from David O. Selznick's
company to film the production. In 1959-60, CBS broadcast a
television series based on Holmes's story. That series, titled
Mr. Lucky, was created by Blake Edwards and starred John
Vivyan. According to news items in LAEx and LAT,
in 1956, RKO approached
Frank Sinatra and
Dean Martin about starring in a musical version of the film.
Cary Grant and
Laraine Day reprised their roles in a
October 18, 1943 Lux
Radio Theater broadcast of the story. Although a March 16,
1956 HR news item reported that William Dozier planned a
musical adaptation of Mr. Lucky , to star
Frank Sinatra, that film was never produced.
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